Punk Rock Tessa
by ashesandhoney
Summary: A series of shorts reimagining Tessa Gray with blue hair and a bit of an attitude.
1. Jessa Canonverse

**AN:** This, like everything I write these days, started on Tumblr with a conversation about Punk Tessa. There are so far 3 different versions of this character. This chapter is a Jessa one though the next 3 are a AH multi-chapter Will/Tessa story so I have the story tagged as Wessa.

Hitchhiker

Canonverse AU - Modern - Jessa

"Pull over. I can drive for awhile," she said.

Jem looked over at her in the dark of the car and she was looking right back at him. She was a strange and fearless creature he had picked up just off the edge of the highway as he crossed into Indiana. Black jeans, a leather jacket two sizes too big, hair streaked through with some bright colour it was hard to pick out in the dark, piercings that glittered down the edge of her ear and one in her lip. Pretty in spite of it all. She didn't seem like someone who would take pretty as a compliment but there it was. She was pretty.

She had put on lip stick in the little mirror on the sun visor before they'd set out again, pressing her lips together in a way that had caught his attention in all the wrong ways or maybe in all the ways she intended it to.

James Carstairs was running from his life and had found a girl who might have been running as well or maybe she just enjoyed hitch hiking. It seemed like a terrifying thing to do. To hitchhike across a country like this that was so huge and had so much empty space. She was going to get herself killed but at least for this leg of her journey, she would survive. Jem wasn't going to let anything happen to her as long as she stayed along with him. The protective feeling had come on fast.

"I'm fine, I like driving," he said.

That wasn't a lie. He also wasn't sure he trusted the nameless girl in the leather jacket to drive his car. He didn't own much. Everything had been sold for this last ditch run across the American plains. But he did own the car and he loved it. Small and a little tattered but it ran perfectly. It was his and he wanted to be the one to drive it. She shrugged and fell back against the seat.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"West," he said.

"Is a direction, not a destination," she said.

"What's your destination?" he asked.

"Right now?" she asked, "Not New York. I'll figure out where exactly once I see it. You?"

"I'm going to go find a warlock who lives in the middle of South Dakota and doesn't speak to anyone," he said. She turned and looked at him. In the flashes of street lights her eyes looked blue or gray or silver. She studied him as though he comment meant something to her. He had intended it as a joke. A sort of bold faced truth that any reasonable person would take as a lie. She was evidently not a reasonable person.

"What's this warlock going to do for you?" she asked.

"If I'm lucky? Save my life. More likely he'll slam the door in my face and it'll all be for nothing," he said.

"Terminal cancer?" she asked making it sound almost like a joke.

"Yin fen poisoning," he said.

She clicked the overhead light on and he almost swerved off the road in surprise. He did pull over, without crashing into the ditch. He put the car into park and turned to look at her. She was leaning across the center console to look at him in the dull light of the car's dome light. Her hair was streaked in pink and blue against that flat matte black that only came out of a bottle. Her eyes were gray. Natural gray, nothing shimmering or silver about them at all, it had been his addiction pressing out little reminders.

"I had thought you were blonde, in the dark, the silver is hard to see," she said touching his hair. He startled but didn't flinch away from the touch. He held her eyes, knowing that his were vivid and unnatural and probably reflecting the lights of oncoming cars like they were discs of metal. He wasn't dressed any more neatly than she was. Rumpled jeans, a black t-shirt, the unnatural eyes. He had been making his way across the country playing classic rock staples on a violin in dive bars. He did surprisingly well.

"They say it's incurable but there's a rumour of this warlock…" he trailed off.

"Winston Best," she said.

"How did you know that?" he asked.

She grinned and then her face wavered like it was a reflection in a pool and someone had thrown a pebble in. The image cleared and the dirty girl with the streaked hair had become a man with curling horns and then again and she was a blonde with movie star good looks and then she was herself again. Or at least the face she chose to wear.

"Start in Kansas City, Winston doesn't meet with just anyone, we're going to have to go through Lily and Delores and they're usually in Kansas," she said.

"What are you?" he asked.

"Warlock, a shifter," she said with a shrug, falling back against the window, "I'm 154 if it makes a difference and I've only met Winston once. He's got some unusual skills but he's a twat. You need an introduction. Lily likes me and Winston likes Delores and Delores does as Lily says. So get on the I70, we have to go to Kansas before we go north."

"And why would you help me?" he asked.

"You're pretty and I'm bored," she said, "Beside no one is on yin fen any more. You're like a throw back to 1875. That's interesting. You live long enough, interesting is worth something."

Then she clicked off the dome light and they were plunged into darkness again. Jem stared at her in the darkness and she stared back, the lights of the dashboard picking out just a few of her features.

"Is that offer to drive still available?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Good, I need a minute to think," he said and he got up and walked around the car. She simply slid over the gear shift and dropped herself into his seat. He sat back down and looked at her as she adjusted the seat and the mirrors. It seemed like far too mundane an activity for someone who could change their face at will and was 154 years old but there she was fussing with the rear view while her earrings flashed in the headlights of oncoming traffic.

"Where to?" she asked and it was a loaded question. She was asking him if he trusted her.

"Kansas," he told her.

And she put his car into gear and took off down the near empty midnight highway, driving too fast and singing along to the radio while he tried to reassemble his thoughts. The highway rolled away below them and Jem let himself entertain a little bit of hope that maybe this was possible.


	2. Wessa AH 1

**AN:** This soft-punk Tessa is one of those tumblr things. She's also deeply influenced by who I imagined I could be when I grew up. Instead I grew up to be a daycare teacher who writes fanfic and knits. I am not exactly breaking into art labs and kissing strangers but still it was funn to pull this fantasy out again.

Art Supply Theft

AH Wessa Part 1

"Have you tried hitting it repeatedly?" the girl asked.

Will looked up from the ereader already glaring. He had been fussing with it, fighting with the buttons and nothing was making the screen unfreeze. The girl sat at the next table over, facing him. She had her foot up on the chair across from her. Heavy black boots, a pair of shorts that showed off a pair of legs that distracted Will's gaze. She raised her eyebrows at him and he realized he had been leering. He hadn't mean to leer but the remains of her shirt slipped off her shoulder and her dark brown hair was twisted back from her face in a messy bun. Between the dilapidated jacket and the blue streaks in her hair and the entire ensemble left him star struck for a moment. She did not belong in a place like this.

"No," he said.

"I've heard that's quite effective," she said.

"I am not going to smash my kindle," he said.

"Not smash, hit, they're very different. Here," she said and she held out a hand. She leaned out across the tables between them and against his better judgement Will got up and sat down across from her and put the device in her hand. She smirked at him. Beneath the eyeliner and the leather, she was younger than he had thought, even younger than he was.

She tapped at his little device, doing things he couldn't see and watching him over it with eyes that might have been blue and might have been gray and were full of mischief. She handed it back a moment later. He realized he had been watching her face and she hadn't broken eye contact.

"Are you a student here?" he asked.

"No," she said, "Are you?"

"No," he admitted.

"So we're both trespassers then," she said.

"I'm here to see my sister," Will said.

"Ah but I, on the other hand, am actually trespassing," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"After hours the art labs are open to students to work on their projects," she said.

"I thought you said that you aren't a student," he said.

"No but I look like one don't I?" she said.

"You look like you should be on tour with one of those bands my mother wouldn't let me listen to when I was thirteen because they would corrupt me," he said and he had meant it as a joke but it had come out making him sound like a hopelessly sheltered little boy. He told himself not to care what she thought of him. All he needed was his ereader back. She didn't give it to him but she smiled again.

"Are you in need of corrupting?" she asked.

"I am perfectly corrupt all on my own," he said and she laughed. It was a bright musical sound. Friendly and warm and it distracted him all over again. He didn't ask for the device back and she still held it in one hand. She gestured with it as she leaned forward. Her boots hit the ground under the table and she was closer. Her eyeliner was just a little bit smudged around her one eye and an escaping bit of blue hair made Will want to reach out and push it back behind her ear.

"Want to help me requisition resources from the university through improper channels?" she asked.

"That's a very technical term," he said.

"It's what the sign on the door of the print lab said, all students must requisition their resources though proper channels. No stealing paint allowed and that is what I am going to do," she said.

"Why?" Will finally asked. He was leaning into her. She had her own field of gravity.

"I produce a zine, an indie magazine. Mostly poetry. We can't afford it. Any of it. So we print it where we can. I'm doing covers. One of the girls in the art program here taught me how to use the screen printer. I'm going to make my fifty covers and then sneak out again," she said.

"You're a guerrilla poet," Will said grinning widely.

"I am not a poet, I am a zine editor," she said.

"A guerrilla editor," Will corrected.

"That's me," she said. "Your sister is here."

The comment threw him. He had forgotten about Cecily who had finally arrived and was standing behind looking at his new friend with curiosity. She looked so perfectly normal and collegiate that it seemed impossible that she could stand there in the same room as the guerrilla poetry editor with the blue hair. It was like they should have existed in different worlds.

"256 after 8," the girl said and flashed him a smile then she gathered up her shoulder bag and walked away with a little wave at Cecily. Will watched legs and had to tear his eyes back to look at Cecily who had sat down in the seat she had just vacated.

"Who was that?" Cecily asked.

"I don't know," Will said and then he looked at the table and realized what was missing. He stood up and looked down the long cafeteria but couldn't see any blue hair. He sat down with a sigh and said, "But she just stole my kindle."

Will went with Cecily to dinner. He listened to her tell him about her classes and her roommate and how much she loved being a student. He bit his tongue hard enough he thought it might bleed as she told him about the TA in her class that she was pretty sure was flirting with her. It was 8:45 by the time he escaped.

He went back to the cafeteria where he had met Cecily and followed the signs to the art building and then hunted around until he found room 256. It was locked and when he knocked a girl with red hair answered.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Blue haired friend said I should meet her here," Will tried.

"Tess?" the red head called out, "Did you invite a boy?"

"He didn't really come," he heard the familiar voice say and she showed up beside her friend. There was yellow paint smear on her cheek and her hair was pulled back tighter than it had been before but she looked otherwise the same.

"I had figured you too much of a good boy for stealing art supplies," she said.

"You have my kindle," he said.

"Well come in and get it then," she said.

Will followed the girls into the print lab. It smelled like paint and solvents and Tess led him past long tables to where she had a complicated set up. The table was covered in the drying covers for her project. The first layer of colour was already laid down on them. She was setting up the next layer. Will didn't entirely understand what she was doing but it was obvious that while the red head working on the next press was an artist, Tess wasn't.

Tess did not give him his kindle. She went back to her screen and painstakingly applied her designs to it. He leaned a hip on the table and watched. Not an artist. Dedicated and careful as she worked, but not an artist. It made her more endearing. He found himself smiling at her as the long tail of her pony tail fell over her shoulder. This time he didn't stop himself, he pushed it back away from her work. She gave him a grateful smile and her friend pointedly ignored them.

"Pass me that one there," she said pointing at a version of her cover that was even worse than the usual ones. Her test copy. She put it in place and he watched as she printed on the next colour. Her jacket was gone and she leaned out over the press and smoothed down the colour and he found himself staring again at the way the tank top she wore hugged her curves.

"How does it look?" she asked and he looked at the result. It looked like an amateur with an inability to draw had made it but he said something vaguely encouraging, "I'm aware that I suck but it's part of the charm of the whole thing. People love my terrible covers."

Will laughed and suddenly he was a part of the project. His sweater tossed over table with her battered jacket. He had paint up to his elbows as they passed them back and forth and added in all three colours to each of her fifty copies and she taught him the basics of print making. They were still there after the other girl left with an order that Tessa lock up the door when she was finished.

Tessa sat on the table beside her drying project and Will swung himself up to sit beside her. She swung her legs and her heavy boots drummed against the cabinet below the table.

"William Herondale," he finally introduced himself.

"Tessa Gray," she said shaking his hand.

"You're a criminal now, a trespasser and a paint thief," she said.

"I don't think any one will notice," he said.

"Still a crime," she said.

"Am I sufficiently corrupted yet?" he asked.

"No, not even close," she said. They were both paint splattered and he grinned at her. She picked up a marker off the table behind her and scrawled something onto the ruined test cover and handed it to him. She leaned in a little closer to him and he got lost in those eyes again, the make up more smudged and the yellow paint streak had been joined by a bit of green too. She was very close when she said, "It's going to take a little while to corrupt you entirely, don't tell your mother."

"Our secret," he said and then he kissed her.


	3. Wessa AH 2

Not a Date

AH Wessa Part 2

"You're in my chair," she said and Will looked up to see Tessa standing over him. She was dressed up but it didn't make her any less herself. A neat button down dress, blue hair swept back into a twist at the back of her head, subdued eyeliner and bright red lipstick. She wore black heels and tights that had a faux black seam running up the back of them. He needed to learn not to stare at her legs every time he saw her.

"It's a theatre, there are literally hundreds of seats," he said. Flirting was apparently a class he had missed. She hadn't. She raised her eyebrows at him and smiled with that bright red mouth and stepped over his lap. She had long legs and the seats were low so she could do it without hiking her dress up too far. Still it was far enough that he now knew she wasn't wearing tights, she was wearing stockings. For a brief moment she was straddling his legs then she sat down elegantly in the chair beside him.

He was not going to survive this play. He hoped like hell that no one asked him what it was about because he was sure he wouldn't know. Tessa Gray smelled like lavendar and leather and wore thigh high stockings and he was incapable of thinking about other things.

"So you know the playwrite?" he asked and the words didn't come out squeaky.

"Friend from school," she said, "This is the first time she's been able to get a slot on the Fringe lineup."

This was a non-date. Their fourth non-date. Tessa sent him a text and he reorganized his schedule to be able to meet her. There hadn't been another kiss. There had been the zine release party where he discovered he did not in the least fit in with her friends. There had been a poetry reading and there had been the coffee he had invited her out for. Now this. Her invites were more interesting than his.

The lights went down and the play started. Will watched the actors on the stage and thought about the girl beside him. He tried to imagine things he could say to her that would be witty and interesting. He thought about unbuttoning the dress and shut that thought down because he had no right to think things like that. He went back to trying to imagine conversation starters based on the play.

Her hand rested on the arm of the chair between them and Will took it. She looked at him in the dark and he laced his fingers with hers. She squeezed back and turned back to the stage. Will smiled and pretended he was watching too but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye.


	4. Wessa AH 3

Tattoos

AH Wessa Part 3

Tessa brought him back to her place after a dinner date that had gone shockingly well. It had taken longer than he was willing to admit to relax around her but now that he had, it had just kept getting better. Tessa laughed at his jokes, played along with his rambling conversation topics as he jumped from thought to thought without any kind of flow. They traded stories and theories. They argued over politics and books and articles on the internet. She texted at random intervals and sometimes it was just a picture of a cat she'd seen on the street.

She hadn't brought him home before. It wasn't what he was expecting. A two bedroom condo in a middleclass neighborhood. Decorated in a plain but neat style. A gray rug, blue curtains, a landscape painting on one wall over the couch. It not only didn't look like her, it looked like it belonged to someone three times her age.

"You live alone?" he asked.

"This place was my aunt's, she willed it to me when she died," she said. "It's paid off so all I have to pay are condo fees and property tax. It's a good deal so I haven't moved. Independent literary magazines aren't exactly lucative."

"It's just not what I expected. It's kind of like finding out the pastor's dayghter has tattoos in indecent places," Will said.

"The blue haired girl has watercolour paintings and a full set of china! Shock and amaze!" and though she was mocking him, it wasn't mean. Her hair was thrown back over one shoulder in a cascade of blue and brown curls. He had to remind himself sometimes that it was alright to touch her and she wasn't some unattainable rock star, she was just a girl. He smoothed an errant curl back into the rest and got a smile from her.

"You probably don't have any tattoos, the badass is all a facade," he teased getting a little closer, "I bet I have more tattoos then you do."

"I have tattoos," she said.

"Where?" he asked.

"You first," she said.

"What?" he said.

"More than none is at least one. I want to know where it is," she said and her hands crawled up his chest as she spoke until she could lace her fingers behind his head.

"No place polite," he sighed looking anywhere but her very curious face.

"Sit, story," she said pulling him down onto the type of sofa someone's elderly aunt would choose. Up close her eyes where far bluer than they had been against the dark liner. She tossed her knees in their tight torn jeans over his lap and he leaned into her. She pulled back before he could kiss her.

"Story," she repeated, "Why do you have a tattoo in an embarrassing place?"

"Alcohol and peer pressure," he said and she just waited. He got lost in her eyes for a moment before pulling himself back together. "My mother is Welsh. I speak the language, we went back to visit her family a few times when I was a kid. The symbol of Wales is a red dragon. As to why I got it where I did, I blame vodka."

"Show me," she said.

"No," he said.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"How many have you got?"

"Three."

He looked at her. None of them were visible. They weren't on her arms or her ankles or her legs. He hadn't seen all of her but he'd seen enough to make him doubt she could be hiding three tattoos.

"Ok, but you're going first. You have more to share," he said.

She sat up and rearranged her legs in a surprisingly graceful movement. She straddled his hips and he leaned back against the cushions to be able to look up at her. She sat up on her knees so her face was well above him. He kept his eyes up because they were level with her chest and he wasn't going to get lost in staring again.

"Are you this confident with everyone?" Will asked and immediately regretted it.

"Confident yes, like this? No, I don't do this with other people," she said. She undid the button on her jeans and shimmyed them lower on her hips. Will forgot how to breathe. She pulled her shirt up so he could see splash of colour just above her hip bone. Like paint splattered on skin and hidden away in the blues and pinks and greens were outlines of gears and cogs and wings. A clockwork angel hidden in the coloyrs. A strange and beautiful choice. He reached out to touch it and then realized how intimate that would be and pulled his fingers back.

"Your turn Welsh boy," she said.

He was not looking forward to this. Technically it was on his thigh but the way it wrapped around, it was close enough to being on his ass to make showing it to anyone nearly impossible. She was still straddling him and though she'd pulled her pants back up they hadn't been buttoned. He jerked his head to the side and she stood up. He was going to have to take off more than she had and he stood up and did it without making eye contact.

"That's well done for a drunk tattoo," she said admiring - no, he corrected himself - looking at it.

"I got the outline when I was drunk. Chose it out of their book. It took two more sessions to have it finished properly. I didn't want it to look like a drunken mistake," he said.

"You're proud of it," she said.

"I'm putting my pants back on," he said blushing just a little bit. Because he was and it made him a little uncomfortable. A lot uncomfortable. His little rebellion against all the things expected of proper young men like himself.

Her next one was on her wrist. A single word, "Endure," which she opted not to explain. He didn't ask why she didn't start with that one because he suspected the answer was the same as why he hadn't refused to show her his.

She looked at him, considered him carefully and he realised she was blushing. Her hip she hadn't flinched at showing him and she hadn't flinched when he'd stood in her living room in his underwear, either. He touched her cheek and she gave him a smile.

"If it's too personal or someplace uncomfortable, you don't need to show me. It's fine," he said.

She kissed him at that. They were more comfortable kissing then they were talking about themselves and though he kissed her back, he wanted her to tell him her secrets more than he wanted the kiss.

"It's on my back," she said when she pulled back. She turned around so she sat with her back to him and reached up under her shirt for a moment before she pulled it off. She had undone her bra so he could see the long unbroken line of her spine from blue hairline to where her hips disappeared into her jeans. And down her spine were words. Will slid closer to her on the sofa and she tensed but didn't pull away.

"Can I touch?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

He ran his fingers over her and the skin was warm and soft beneath his fingers. It was a long narrow piece of text, running down the right side of her spine like the bone was a margin. It was not the sort of thing most people had tattooed, but he recognized it. It took a moment or two but it was the opening to a Tale of Two Cities. She shivered as he ran his fingers over "the best of times" and she sighed when he pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

(elanorjoy wanted showing off of tattoos and so shall it be)


	5. Canon Rewrite

AN: A very different interpretation of punk!Tessa. This piece is canonverse and a modern au with a Tessa who is far less cute and fluffy than the one in the Wessa drabbles.

Make Me A Monster

Canonverse AU - One Shot

Tessa Gray was a poor kid. She knew her way around the darker corners of New York City. She carried a knife in her boot and another in her pocket. Her brother dealt drugs and Tessa kept the math on his deals while telling him over and over again that he needed to get out of that life. When he disappeared to London, chasing the score of a life time, she told herself she wouldn't follow him. It was only a month and a half before his pleading text messages and slew of London pictures finally led her to tell him if he could find the money for a plane ticket, she would use it.

With a clockwork angel slung around her neck and everything she owned packed into a single carry on bag, she left behind New York City with a pang in her chest. Her aunt died while Tessa was still in high school and with no one to take them in, she and Nate had slipped through the cracks in the social system. She wondered sometimes what would have happened if she had put her foot down and demanded they go to the meeting with the social worker but she hadn't. She had let Nate convince her that running away at 15 was a better choice than foster care. He was already 18, he wouldn't have been able to go with her and his business deals would have not only made him unfit to be her guardian but probably would have landed him in jail if anyone went looking.

She stepped off the plane at Heathrow to be met by a pair of women in jewel toned business suits and a sign with "Theresa Gray" printed on it in neat letters. She should have walked by them. Should have just run. Headed off into the city. It was safer on her own. But she had introduced herself instead.

And it had landed her here.

Here was an ancient, empty building. She hated every inch of it. She wore a dress more than thirty years out of style and sat in the room down in the basement of the rotting structure where the moisture seeped out of the wall and the Dark Sisters attempted to teach her magic. They stayed behind their desk and lectured her on the theory of magic and transformation and tried to bully her into doing what they wanted her to.

The sisters no longer kept anything on their desk. The globe, a pen, a crystal paperweight, all of it had become weaponry. For the first few weeks she had let threats against her brother keep her from behaving too badly but then they'd shown her a video where he'd looked out of the screen without a single bruise on his face and asked her to do as she was told.

Nate sold people out. She knew that. He had let a childhood friend take the fall for him so he didn't have to go to upstate. He had cost Aunt Harriet more than one job. He had lied to a drug lord once and one of his friends had wound up with his legs broken while Nate walked away free as a bird.

She had thought she was above it but apparently she wasn't.

After that realization she hadn't been so well behaved.

She had stabbed one of them. The thin one. She had finally changed as they wanted her to. Her body had cracked and stretched and become other and she'd fallen to the floor in a pool of her own vomit. They'd stood over her, not even checking if she was breathing, and chattered about how well it was going. She had come up with the knife from her boot and hit the woman in the throat. The blood had fountained but it might have been a paper cut for all the good it was. Tessa didn't know what they were but they weren't human. Neither was she but she didn't heal that fast.

That had been the last time she had seen her own clothing. After that it was these old dresses and no shoes. She crossed her arms and tucked her feet up under her on the chair she sat on. She was still bruised. Not from the stabbing incident, from something more recent. She fought often enough that the sisters were wary of getting too close to her but that didn't mean she wasn't still the weakest one in the room.

She was better at the change than she pretended to be. She could change without fainting now and practiced it over and over in her room while they weren't there. But when they were, she always collapsed. This time when the shorter woman came to roll her over with a little kick to her shoulder, Tessa let her hand fall out and touch her shoe. Just a little, not enough to be noticeable, but enough to pull in the change.

She didn't wrap it around herself. Not yet. She held onto it, like a treasure as one of them, she wasn't sure which, took a cheap shot kick at her ribs. She groaned but didn't get up. She made them call the horrible maid to drag her back to her room. Miranda was strong enough to do it. To lift Tessa and carry her like a child back up all those steps.

"She's too fragile for the change. Her mind cannot take it, perhaps we should try meditation training?" one of the sisters said as they followed Miranda and the unconscious Tessa out of the room.

"Or medication, drugs would perhaps make her more docile," the other said.

"She is a nasty thing. The Magister could find better than this for a wife," Mrs. Dark said.

"She'll break eventually, perhaps he wouldn't mind if we did some of that work for him," Mrs. Black said.

They had Miranda drop Tessa not on the bed but on the floor. She didn't react. She stayed still and limp until the door clicked shut and the lock turned. Then she scrambled to her feet and changed into Mrs. Dark. The change was different, harder to hold, unsettling and nauseating. Not human, not human, not human. It was in every beat of this heart.

"Neither am I," Tessa told herself in her borrowed voice. She held onto the rail of the bed with hands that weren't right, too large, clawed and the colour of elephant skin. She held the change and waited for the swirling nausea to stop. She was not going to break and she was not going to let them be stronger than she was. She had no one in the world who cared about her but that didn't give them the right to treat her like that. If they were going to teach her how to be a monster, they were going to regret it.

Once she had control of the change she reached out one of her clawed hands and the brass bed lifted and spun once. She didn't know how to do that but Mrs. Dark did so it didn't matter. She lay her hand against the door and the locks clicked and rolled back. Tessa looked at it for a moment and smiled. She was going to learn how to do this for herself without this awful borrowed body full of bitter thoughts. Just knowing it was possible made her feel better.

She was too curious to just run for the door, she picked through the rooms and was rewarded with her own clothing. Her jeans were still bloody from the stabbing incident but both her knives where there. She gathered the pile up, pausing to use a spell to life the blood out of the fabrics, and tucked it under her arm. She stepped out the front door and looked down the steps to see a man standing by the gate. He had driven the car that had brought them through the snarling London traffic. He looked up at her with bulging eyes but didn't react. Tessa, barefoot and wearing a stolen body, walked past him and out into the city of London without him so much as lifting himself away from the fence.

She went back that night, after dark, wearing her own body and her own clothing, and set the place on fire with a spell she had stolen from Mrs. Dark's own mind.


End file.
